Since the day has just begun, Fergus, Ronain and Eilidh get right into it. Leaving me and Mairi free to roam. I told Fergus we won’t actually be able to stay longer than a week, at which he frowned, but that’s already pushing our timeline. We were supposed to go here and back, if we stay away any more than a few extra days, everyone is going to be sick with worry.
Mairi and me make our way down the path to the north of the village.
It’s surprising how well I remember these paths, given how messed up I was last time I passed by here. It’s amazing what having healthy legs can do for you. In no time at all, we make our way back to the fork where I made my fateful decision. After that it’s just a straight, well, sorta straight line along the path.
I have no idea where exactly I found the tree, so I’m counting on the attraction I felt last time to guide me there.
It’s almost comical how easy it is. After a few hours of steady walking, I feel a tug on my mind, and I gesture to Mairi that this is where we turn off the road. She happily follows, though she struggles a bit walking through the undergrowth barefoot, being more accustomed to the packed dirt paths and city cobblestones.
Blue light filters through the leaves above us, dancing across my skin like ghostly fingers. The tree stands before us, somehow more magnificent than I remember. Glowing fruits hang heavy on every branch, more numerous than before, swaying slightly despite the still air. Each one pulses with an inner radiance, like dozens of captured moons. The entire tree seems to breathe with ancient power, and for a moment I swear I can feel its roots stretching deep into the earth beneath my feet.
Beside me, Mairi has gone completely still, a rare sight for the usually fidgety child. Her eyes are wide with wonder, reflecting tiny points of blue light like stars. “It’s… it’s beautiful,” she whispers, her usual brash confidence momentarily forgotten in the face of something truly magical. She takes a hesitant step forward, her small hand reaching up as if to touch one of the lower-hanging fruits, then pulls back, casting a questioning glance my way.
I understand her caution. It was hard to appreciate last time I was here, exhausted and hurt as I was, but there’s something almost sacred about the scene - like we’ve stumbled into a fairy tale. The air feels different here, heavier somehow, charged with possibility. A slight breeze rustles through the leaves, making the glowing fruit dance and shimmer, and I swear I can almost hear music in the movement.
I nod encouragingly at Mairi, breaking the spell of reverence that had momentarily overtaken us both. “Go ahead,” I say softly, “but be careful - they’re very juicy.” I watch as she stretches up on her tiptoes, her small fingers wrapping around one of the lower-hanging fruits. The glow intensifies slightly at her touch, as if responding to her presence. With characteristic determination, she pulls it free and immediately takes a bite, softly glowing juice running down her chin and reflecting the ethereal light from above, making her face shimmer momentarily.
While Mairi enjoys her fruit, I turn my attention to gathering some for later. The wooden chest Rhona had given me isn’t large, but it’s sturdy and should keep the fruits from being crushed. I carefully select six of the ripest-looking specimens, each one pulsing with that strange blue light as I pluck it from its branch. They feel warm in my hands, almost alive, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m taking something precious, something that doesn’t quite belong in our mundane world of dirt streets and empty bellies. Still, I arrange them carefully in the chest, trying to nestle them so they won’t bounce around too much on our journey back.
I glance over at Mairi just as her eyes go wide, her half-eaten fruit forgotten in her small hand. She stretches out her other arm in front of her face, turning it this way and that, as if seeing it for the first time. I recognize that look of wonder and bewilderment - it’s exactly how I must have appeared when I first experienced the strange doubling of perception. She wiggles her fingers slowly, deliberately, and I can tell she’s marveling at the strange sensation of seeing and feeling both bodies move in perfect synchronization.
“I… I can feel…” she trails off, struggling to find the words to describe this entirely new sensation. The usual rapid-fire chatter that follows her everywhere is notably absent, replaced by a sort of reverent amazement. She presses her hand against her chest, then against a nearby tree trunk, testing the boundaries of this new awareness. The blue juice still glistening on her chin catching the ethereal light from the fruit above, makes her look almost fae-like in the dappled shade.
I’m watching her explore this new sensation when suddenly her head snaps up, her eyes meeting mine with a calculating gleam that immediately sets me on edge. The contemplative wonder vanishes from her face, replaced by a familiar mischievous grin that spreads slowly across her juice-stained lips. Before I can even process the change, she launches herself at me with all the fury of a tiny whirlwind. I instinctively drop into juice mode myself, expecting to dodge, or block her attack as I did during our first encounter - but Mairi hasn’t just been standing there in awe. While I see her movements turn slightly awkward as she sinks into the same temporal distortion for the first time, her natural agility compensates for it in ways I hadn’t thought possible. Ways that were certainly impossible for me. There’s a blur of brown hair and small fists, and the next thing I know, I’m staring up at the canopy of glowing fruit, flat on my back with the breath knocked out of me. Mairi stands over me, hands on her hips, wearing a triumphant smile that would put a cat with a canary to shame. I can’t help but laugh, even as my pride smarts from being so thoroughly trounced by an eight-year-old girl.
As I dust myself off and sit up, Mairi becomes a whirlwind of motion and giggles, darting between the trees with newfound enthusiasm. From my perspective, there’s little to mark the difference between her usual energetic self and this enhanced version—just subtle things, like the way her movements occasionally stutter or flow too smoothly, betraying moments when she shifts in and out of the temporal distortion. It’s strange, watching from the outside. When you’re the one experiencing it, everything feels so profound, so dramatically different, but here I am, watching an eight-year-old girl basically playing tag with herself, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think she was just being… well, an eight-year-old girl.
She stops abruptly by a fallen log, her face scrunched up in concentration as she carefully places one foot in front of the other, probably testing how the distortion affects her balance. The juice stains around her mouth have dried to a faint purple, and her hair is increasingly disheveled from her acrobatics, but her eyes still sparkle with that mixture of wonder and mischief that seems uniquely hers. I find myself smiling, remembering my own first experiments with this strange power—though mine had been considerably more cautious, a lot less successful, and certainly less playful.
I glance up at the tree, trying to count the glowing fruits that still dangle from its branches. Even after our harvest, there seem to be hundreds left, their ethereal blue light creating a mesmerizing constellation through the leaves. The longer I stare, the more difficult it becomes to keep track - the gentle pulsing of their light makes them seem to shift and multiply, like stars appearing in the evening sky. Some clusters hang so high that they blur together into a soft azure haze, while others remain tantalizingly just out of reach. I find myself wondering how quickly the tree replenishes itself. How many fruits you should expect on any given tree. How much juice you’d get out of every fruit. All the mechanics of the thing. Everything I’ve heard from Rhona and Iain seems to indicate these trees are just like any other fruit tree. But standing here, bathed in that otherworldly glow, watching the fruits shift and shimmer like stars at dusk, my gut tells me there’s more to it. Something that can’t be measured or predicted, something that laughs at human attempts to understand it.
I pluck a new fruit for myself, and take a bite. The juice dribbles down my cheeks, making me look much the same as Mairi. I can slowly feel my juice supply refilling, and part of me can’t help but rejoice as I get closer to full, it truly is like filling your stomach. If you use it, you get hungry, and you’ll be drawn towards food, just like smelling a bakery when you haven’t had lunch yet.
As my awareness of the tree fades, I start thinking we might as well go back to the cave and properly document the runes there. I can make another attempt at writing down the more complex ones. Don’t think we’ll be able to do anything with them soon, nor should, for that matter, but it’ll be good to have them.
Sure, copying the runes down could spell disaster if they fall into the wrong hands—Iain’s dire warnings echo in my ears. But my fingers itch to preserve that knowledge, to understand it. Besides, who better to keep these secrets than someone who actually gives a shit about not starting another war? Still… the fact that I’m justifying this to myself probably means something. Fuck it. Knowledge is knowledge, and I’d rather have it and not need it.
“Mairi,” I call softly, trying not to startle her out of whatever game she’s playing with herself. She pivots mid-step, her movement unnaturally fluid thanks to the fruit’s effects. “Lets go now. I want to show you my hidden cave."
She bounds over to me, her face flushed with excitement and exertion. “What about Eilidh?” she asks, glancing at the remaining fruits overhead. “Shouldn’t we bring her some too?”
I follow her gaze to the gently pulsing fruits and shake my head reluctantly. “We can’t. These things glow like lanterns—no way to walk into the village with these and not be noticed.” I gesture at the wooden chest already filled with our earlier harvest. “These are safe, and if we get a chance later we can just give her one. Besides," I add, trying to soften my refusal, “Eilidh’s supposed to be studying herbcraft right now. Can’t exactly explain why glowing juice is dribbling down her chin now can we?”
The silent judgment in Mairi’s eyes makes my skin prickle. “You keep calling it ‘the village’,” she says slowly, each word dripping with suspicion, “why don’t you just use its name?” Heat creeps up my neck. “Uh…” The word hangs in the air between us, and her face falls flat. “You don’t know do you…?” I stand there frozen, caught in my own ignorance, until she breaks the silence. “Coille Dhubh,” she declares, and I just stare back blankly. “That’s it’s name!” she nearly shouts at me, exasperated. “How can you have been here multiple times and still not know?” She clicks her tongue, muttering under her breath, “Just like Iain. How are you ever going to deceive someone if you don’t even know where they live?”
It takes me a while to get over that, and the vague feeling of shame doesn’t leave me until w’re nearly back to the village—no dammit, Coille Dhubh— though we don’t actually enter it, and instead make our way around it to the cave. It’s late afternoon when we get there, and it’s kind of hard to see already. When we step into the cave, the runes on the side of the entrance are already alight, glowing with their uncanny blue light. While this makes them easy to see, they don’t give off enough light by themselves to actually see what you are writing.
I gather dry branches and debris from the cave’s entrance, supplementing them with branches from the forest, while Mairi eagerly helps by collecting smaller twigs and leaves. We soon have a modest fire going, its warm light creating a cozy circle that pushes back the darkness and blends with the runes’ cool blue glow. It makes me smile to remember that this is almost the exact spot where Ronain first taught me how to make fire.
I settle down cross-legged near the fire, pulling out the pieces of bark I’d gathered on our way here. The firelight dances across the rough surface, making it easier to see what I’m doing while also casting strange, shifting shadows that sometimes make the runes on the wall seem to move. Mairi positions herself opposite me, her face alternately lit by the orange glow of the flames and the supernatural blue of the runes, making her look almost otherworldly.
“Hand me that smaller piece,” I murmur, reaching out without taking my eyes off the wall. The runes are more complex than I remembered, with subtle variations in their curves and angles that I hadn’t noticed before. I can’t help but wonder if the fruit’s effects are helping me see details I missed during my first desperate copying attempt, it’s certainly good for copying fine details though. If your hand moves three times a slow, you get a lot more opportunity to stop in time, or draw fine curves. My hand moves carefully across the bark, trying to capture every nuance of the strange symbols while being acutely aware that each mark could be the difference between success and disaster. Well, I assume that. For all I know the margin of error on what constitutes a ‘proper’ rune is huge. Maybe it only matters that they’re sufficiently different from any other to differentiate them? It’s magic, it could do anything.
The scratching of my makeshift stylus against bark fills the cave, punctuated only by the occasional pop from the fire and the steady drip of water somewhere in the darkness. I’m so absorbed in capturing every detail of a particularly intricate rune that I barely register Mairi’s movement as she shifts position, scooting closer to the wall. Her small face is scrunched up in concentration, brown eyes reflecting the mixed light of fire and runes as she studies the markings with unusual intensity. After a few minutes of silence—possibly a record for her—she extends one finger toward a familiar symbol.
“Is this the one?” she asks, tracing the air just in front of the rune that seems to pulse slightly brighter at her proximity. “The one you used for the water and dust thing?”
“Mmhmm,” I respond absently, most of my attention focused on getting the curve of another symbol just right. It’s only when I hear the sharp intake of breath and feel an unfamiliar surge of power that my brain catches up with what’s happening. My head snaps up, eyes widening in horror as I realize my mistake—but it’s too late.
The shockwave erupts right in the middle of the cave with all the subtlety of a thunderclap. It kicks up a cloud of dust and debris, sending my carefully arranged bark pieces scattering and nearly extinguishing our fire, when the whole of it is blasted several meters away over the rough cave floor. As the ripples fade away and the dust begins to settle, I find myself staring at Mairi’s dirt-streaked face, her expression frozen somewhere between shock and delight, her hair standing nearly on end somehow.
“Oops,” she says, not sounding sorry in the slightest.
I sit there, bark fragments scattered around me, mouth slightly agape, trying to process what just happened. The logical part of my brain is informing me that I should be angry—after all, she just caused a near explosion in our relatively secret cave hideout. But that thought is completely overwhelmed by the sheer impossibility of what I just witnessed.
While I’m still struggling to form words, my brain helpfully supplies a comparison: it took me weeks of frustrating trial and error just to get the smallest effect from the same rune. Weeks of headaches, of trying to figure out the trick of how these two bodies worked together. Of fighting against my own mind’s stubborn insistence that I could only move the juice with that second body, not the mind. And here’s Mairi, not more than a few hours after her first taste of the fruit, casually triggering a rune that I have barely figured out. Sure, I expect future runes to go a lot faster for me, the theory is the same after all, but what the hell?
I look at her dirt-smudged face, those bright eyes still dancing with excitement, and finally manage to croak out, “How did you…?” I trail off, not even sure what I’m asking. How did you know what to do? How are you already using both minds so effortlessly? How did you figure out that it was the mind, not the body? The questions pile up like the debris around us, but none of them quite make it past my stunned silence.
Is this the benefit of getting this power at an early age? I look around at the scattered bark around the cave, that imagine there’s probably an age that is optimal to start teaching at. Clearly kids have an easy time figuring it out, but they need the responsibility that comes with being adults. Then I remember how I located this rune inside my own body on my first attempt. Maybe not as true as I would like it to be.
Mairi bounces to her feet, already reaching toward another rune with the same eager curiosity. Her finger traces the air near a particularly complex symbol, one that seems to writhe in the mixed light of fire and magical glow. Before she can make contact, I grab her wrist—gently, but firmly.
“Hold on there, little demolitions expert,” I say, trying to keep my tone light despite my concern. “Let’s not blow up any more of the cave until we actually understand what we’re doing.” Her face falls into an impressive pout, complete with furrowed brows and slightly pursed lips. It’s the kind of expression that probably works wonders on the merchants in town, but I know exactly what it means by now. "These aren’t toys, Mairi. We need to figure out what each one does before we start experimenting.” I try to think of an example, and say “What of instead of a shockwave, it instead summons a wolf? Right here in the cave?”
She drops back down to sit cross-legged, arms folded across her chest in a perfect picture of childish disappointment. But I notice her eyes haven’t lost that spark of mischief. Before I can return to my copying, she’s already eying the original rune again. This time, though, her face scrunches up in concentration, and instead of the explosive blast from before, there’s just a tiny ‘pop’—barely enough to disturb the dust at her feet.
A satisfied grin spreads across her face, and before I can say anything, she’s creating more tiny blasts, like a string of firecrackers going off around the cave. Pop-pop-pop. Each one perfectly controlled, each one just strong enough to create a small puff of dust. She looks at me triumphantly, as if to say ‘See? I can be careful!’ I can’t help but shake my head, caught between exasperation and amazement at her rapid mastery of the power.
It does lead me to notice something though. The pops are unequal. In hindsight I should have maybe noticed this before, but… they’re not actually shockwaves. No air is displaced by what we’re doing. That’d be very near an explosion I imagine, at least the concussive part. Instead, the rune seems to be pushing on everything that’s not air. The pops Mairi’s tiny explosions make, are just the sounds of various dust particles and small piece of debris hitting the floor and walls. When she makes one in midair, it barely does anything, except create a faint ring of displaced dust that’s otherwise invisible.
I wonder how that works. If it just displaced everything, then that’d sorta make sense, though the idea of it making a vacuum would be a bit weird, I could understand it. Why does it ignore air though? Is it based on how you perceive reality? No. If that were the case then I’d probably displace everything, given I know air is a thing that can be displaced. Is it just hardcoded in the rune? Like a game? It certainly displaces water though… I get temporarily distracted by figuring this out, before realizing that it’s pointless until I figure out what the other runes do.
Mairi seems unbothered by this, testing the thing out on everything in the cave to see what it does. Eventually she settles on launching pebbles across the cave, until one bounces of the wall and hits me in the back, and I tell her to take it outside. That hurt. It didn’t actually cause a bruise I think, so it’s probably not a very effective weapon, but it’s still more than I thought to use it for.
Before she steps outside, I ask her how much juice all that blasting is costing here, but she doesn’t seem to understand the question. So either it’s really small, or she just hasn’t noticed she’s slowly running out. Then again, it cost me a third of my capacity to make a blast three meters across. You can fit thousands of the small 10cm things Mairi is doing in there. Assuming its cost is based on volume anyway. There’s still too much about this stuff that we don’t know.
I guess I could plant myself next to the tree and just keep it up until I figure out the relative cost? I can always eat another fruit if I run out of power. As I have that thought, I realize that there’s a lot more to the reason people keep these trees behind lock and key. It allows them to do research that others can’t. Even if you eat a single fruit, eventually you’ll run out of juice, and that’s just not enough to truly figure out how it all works. I was half empty when I got back here, and that was slightly over a month of intermittent usage.
Suddenly, I hear a nasty noise outside, somewhat akin to an explosion, and a moment later Mairi comes running into the cave, her face white. “I… I…” she stammers. Then from outside, there is a mighty creaking noise, a thunderous roar of branches breaking, and a crash. “The tree… It…” I crouch in front of her, and try to calm her down. “Don’t worry about it, what happened?” Then I notice that her arm is soaked through with blood. I pull her sleeve back, and find a massive wooden splinter stuck in her arm.
The splinter is deeply embedded, dark wood stark against Mairi’s pale skin and the bright red blood that keeps welling up around it. My hands hover uncertainly for a moment—I know you’re not supposed to remove embedded objects, but seeing it there, seeing her blood continuing to seep out… My stomach lurches. This isn’t like the scrapes and bruises I’ve seen on her before.
I tear a strip from the bottom of my dress—not caring for a moment that it’s my only garment—trying to stabilize the splinter and slow the bleeding, but the makeshift bandage quickly soaks through. Mairi’s face is growing paler by the minute, her usual chatter replaced by shallow, quick breaths. The sight of her blood-soaked sleeve and her uncharacteristic silence sends a spike of fear through me.
“Hold on, sweetheart,” I murmur, scooping her up as gently as I can. She feels so small in my arms, her good hand clutching weakly at my shirt. The village is at least fifteen minutes away at a normal pace, but I don’t have time for normal. I break into a run, trying to keep my movements smooth despite my pounding heart and the uneven ground. It’s a good thing I know this area intimately. Each jostle draws a tiny whimper from Mairi, the sound cutting straight through me. I force myself to focus on the path ahead, on keeping my footing, on anything but the warm wetness seeping into my clothes where her arm presses against me.
“Just stay with me,” I pant, pushing myself faster. “We’re almost there.” It’s a lie—we’re not even halfway—but Mairi’s eyes are starting to look unfocused, and I need her to hold on. I need her to stay awake. I need her to be okay. The thought of losing her, this fierce, brilliant child, is unthinkable. So I run, my legs burning, my lungs screaming, but none of it matters as much as the increasingly limp bundle in my arms.
The door crashes open with such force that it rebounds against the wall, making the dried herbs hanging from the ceiling dance and sway. I burst in, Mairi cradled against my chest, her blood now soaked through both our clothes. “Help!” I manage between gasping breaths, my legs trembling from the run. “Please!”
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Eilidh and Ronain spin around from their workbench, mouths agape, a handful of crushed herbs falling forgotten from Eilidh’s fingers. But it’s Master Fergus who moves with surprising swiftness for his age, he takes one look at Mairi’s arm and takes control, his papery hands already clearing space on his main work table before I can take another step. Everything that was on the table clatters to the ground, breaking, splashing, not a care given to what it was. “Here, child,” he commands, his voice carrying a steady authority that cuts through my panic. “Lay her down.” The usual mischievous twinkle in his pale eyes has been replaced by the sharp focus of half a century of experience. As I gently place Mairi on the table, he’s already rolling up his sleeves, his gnarled fingers moving with practiced efficiency as he examines the wound. “Ronain, my surgical kit. Eilidh, I need fresh water and clean linens. Now.”
The room erupts into controlled chaos, a rehearsed dance I can only look at in wonder. Eilidh disappears through a small door I hadn’t noticed before, her white ponytail whipping around the corner as she moves with surprising purpose. Ronain’s footsteps thunder up what must be stairs, and I can hear him rummaging through something above. The confidence in their movements strikes me—there’s no confusion, no asking where things are kept, no hesitation. A wry thought crosses my mind, even through my worry: I wonder if Fergus drilled them on emergency procedures before anything else, like some medieval version of airline safety instructions. Ronain I understand, but Eilidh has been here all of one day.
Ronain returns first, his arms cradling a worn leather case that’s clearly seen its share of emergencies. The brass clasps are polished from frequent use, and there’s a certain weight to how he handles it, as if the contents are precious beyond measure. Master Fergus takes it without looking up from Mairi’s arm, his fingers already working at the straps with practiced efficiency. The sound of the clasps opening seems unnaturally loud in the sudden quiet, broken only by Mairi’s shallow breathing and the distant splash of water from wherever Eilidh has gone.
The door bursts open again as Eilidh returns, water sloshing over the rim of a deep copper basin clutched against her chest. Clean linens are draped over her arm, stark white against her stained dress. Again, I wonder at the wealth casually displayed here. The only thing I’ve ever seen a basin made out of is wood, even in the city. She sets everything down with trembling hands, though her face remains composed. Master Fergus nods approvingly and reaches for the splinter, his weathered fingers poised above Mairi’s arm.
“Wait!” The word escapes me before I can stop it. Everyone freezes, turning to look at me with varying degrees of surprise and concern. I swallow hard, suddenly aware of questioning the man who’s clearly done this countless times before. “Your hands… shouldn’t we wash them first?” The memory of my fever-wracked body and festering leg wound rises unbidden. “Infections,” I add softly, almost apologetically.
Master Fergus’s eyebrows rise slightly, and for a moment, I fear I’ve offended him. His pale eyes lock with mine, sharp and questioning, before something in them softens. Without a word, he plunges his hands into the basin, splashing water over his weathered knuckles and between his fingers, before rubbing them together. Water drips from his elbows as he works, but his eyes never leave mine, storing away my strange request for later questioning. “Ronain, Eilidh, hold her legs. And you,” His voice cuts through the tense silence as he shakes the water from his hands. He jerks his chin toward me. “keep her shoulders still. This won’t be pleasant.”
What follows is a meticulous process that seems to stretch for hours, though it can’t be more than minutes. Master Fergus cleans the wound with careful precision, his movements gentle but sure as he works. When he finally threads the needle, the firelight catches on its curved surface, and I have to look away. Mairi whimpers softly as the first stitch goes in, her small hand finding mine and squeezing tight. I count my own heartbeats to stay calm, focusing on the steady rhythm of Fergus’s hands as he works, each neat stitch closing the angry wound bit by bit.
Finally, Master Fergus ties off the last stitch with practiced fingers and reaches for a small, well-worn tin I immediately recognize. The familiar scent fills the air as he unseals it, and I can’t help but smile despite my exhaustion. The same salve that had worked such wonders on my wounds. As he spreads the pale green paste carefully around the neat row of stitches, I feel Mairi’s death grip on my hand gradually loosen. The tight lines of pain around her eyes soften, and her rapid, shallow breathing begins to even out. I watch the tension melt from her small frame like ice in spring, remembering vividly the first time I’d felt that blessed relief myself. It’s strange how something so simple - a bit of paste in a humble tin - can seem more miraculous than any modern painkiller. There’s clearly more to this world’s medicines than meets the eye, and I find myself wondering about the true nature of Master Fergus’s craft.
Eilidh looks on in wonder. Her mouth hanging open as she observes the effect of the salve. “Will I learn how to make that?” he asks breathlessly. Master Fergus looks over at her, the twinkle back in his eyes now that the worst is over. “Not within the coming week you won’t,” he replies with a smile. Her face falls, but not by much, she nods, apparently having already expected that answer.
I look at Mairi’s face, now relaxed. She’s seemingly transitioned straight to sleep. I really wanted to know what happened, but I think I can make an educated guess.
Seeing Mairi’s peaceful face, Master Fergus gestures toward a rough wooden door behind his workbench. “There’s a bed through there—Ronain’s room. Let her rest; she’ll need it.” I gather Mairi’s small form in my arms again, this time without the desperate urgency of before. Her head lolls against my shoulder, and I can feel the steady rhythm of her breathing. As I pass through the doorway, I notice Ronain doesn’t even flinch at the idea of giving up his bed. Instead, he’s already moving to pull back the woolen blanket, his face etched with genuine concern.
The room is small but tidy, with herbs drying from the rafters and a few carefully preserved books stacked on a crude shelf. There’s something touching about the way Ronain hovers as I settle Mairi onto the narrow bed, his usual scholarly detachment replaced by an almost brotherly protectiveness. Once she’s tucked in, I brush a strand of hair from her forehead, taking a moment to steady myself before returning to face the questions I know are coming.
Sure enough, Master Fergus is waiting in his chair by the workbench, his pale eyes sharp with curiosity. The blood-stained table has already been cleaned, and the surgical implements carefully put away. He gestures to another chair, and I sink into it gratefully, my legs finally remembering their exhaustion from the frantic run.
“Now then,” he says, his weathered hands folded in his lap, “perhaps you might tell me what brought our young friend to such a state.” He pauses, a slight smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “And after that, you can explain this business about washing hands. In all my years of healing, I’ve never heard such a request, yet you spoke with the certainty of someone who knows its importance.”
I take a second to think, “Let me start with the easy one. You were going to wash out her wound right?”, he motions with his hand to concede the point, and for me to continue “Well, the stuff you wash out of the wound, not the blood, but the dirt, and other stuff, that’s on your hands too.” I shrug. “If you wash it out of the wound, but then put it back in with your hands afterwards, that kind of defeats the point.” Master Fergus—It’s strange how it’s hard to think of him as anything other than Master Fergus—is silent for a while. “That sounds correct, but I feel like you are holding something back. Like you’ve dumbed down your explanation somehow.” he says to me with a slight trace of annoyance in his tone.
Eep. Well, he’s not incorrect. Guess you can’t become an apothecary and grow to his age without being perceptive. I mean, I don’t actually mind telling him, I just don’t think it’ll make sense to him, but whatever. “Well, that’s because I did. And I did that because I’m not entirely certain how this all works anymore myself.” I pause, thinking of how to best say this. “The sum of it is, that there’s little creatures. Smaller than you can see, that infest everything. They’re on your hands, on your tools, on the floor, everywhere. The only way to get rid of them is by washing your hands, boiling water, which kills them, or by sterilizing your tools with fire.” I look around the room, trying to spot something like soap, before slowly saying “It’d be even better if you had soap, but I don’t know how to make that.”
Master fergus stares at me, and I feel slightly uncomfortable under his gaze. It’s not clear to me from his expression whether he’s getting ready to denounce me as a witch—which, come to think of it, would be fair—or thank me. “I see.” he says slowly, still lost in thought. A moment later, he’s back, and he ask me “And that is everything you know?” I nod, feeling slightly sorry to not be of more help, “Where I come from, this much is common knowledge. I didn’t exactly need to know the details because I was no healer.”
There’s another small nod “At least you are telling me the truth now.” he says, with a hint of reproach that leaves me feeling like I swallowed something wrong. “Then how about my other question? How did that girl end up with such a grievous wound?”
I was kind of hoping he’d forget about that other question of his in all the talk of microbes. No such luck I guess. “In all honestly, I don’t know that. I was… outside when she came running up to me in panic. I thought she’d just done something stupid, but her arm was like that.”
Master Fergus’s eyes narrow, and I can feel the weight of his disapproval settle over me like a heavy cloak. His weathered fingers drum once, twice on the arm of his chair—a measured gesture that somehow manages to convey decades of dealing with half-truths and evasions. “Child,” he says, and despite being thirty-two, I feel properly chastised, “I’ve just spent the better part of an hour putting that girl back together. No questions asked, mind you.” He lets the silence stretch, and I find myself fighting the urge to squirm in my seat like a schoolgirl caught passing notes. Finally, I crack under his steady gaze. “Fine,” I mutter, rubbing my temple. “I may have been… experimenting with something. Near a tree. Which might have, sort of… exploded.”
Master Fergus leans back in his chair, the wood creaking softly beneath him. His expression shifts from skepticism to something more complex—a mixture of surprise and what might be recognition flickering across his weathered features. For a moment, he studies me with those pale, knowing eyes, as if seeing something new in me, something that makes him reassess everything he thought he knew. Then his eyes widen slightly, and I can almost see the pieces falling into place behind them, though whatever conclusion he’s reached is anyone’s guess. He opens his mouth as if to say something, then seems to think better of it, his lips pressing into a thin line. Finally, he simply says, “Be careful, lass. Some trees have deeper roots than others.” There’s a weight to his words that suggests he’s not talking about actual trees at all, but I’m too exhausted to puzzle out his meaning right now.
That evening, I have a hard time getting to sleep. Master Fergus has graciously allowed us to stay in his house, though we’re still sleeping on the mats we brought, since both beds are occupied. Ronain wouldn’t hear of kicking Mairi out of his bed, so he’s sleeping on the ground with me and Eilidh. Through the dim moonlight filtering in, I catch Ronain’s head turning—again—toward Eilidh’s sleeping form. His eyes linger on her face, soft and peaceful in sleep, before he quickly looks away. He’s done this at least six times now. I hide my smile in the darkness; he’s still so young, soon eleven if my count of the seasons is right. When Eilidh leaves in a few days, she’ll likely vanish from his life forever, but watching him now brings back memories of my own first crush—that flutter in the stomach, the stolen glances, thinking the whole world revolved around one person.
When sleep finally comes, it is the deep, dreamless sleep of complete exhaustion.
image [https://pub-43e7e0f137a34d1ca1ce3be7325ba046.r2.dev/Group.png]
The next five days pass in a flash. Eilidh is laser focused on learning as much as possible, which I think both disappoints and excites Ronain, as he gets to spend all that time with her.
Mairi is in bed for a day by order of Master Fergus, and has enough of it after about two hours, claiming she’s doing well enough that she can get up. I stand watching in the doorway as he looks at her in surprise, and pokes her wounded arm once with his finger, at which she cries out, and looks at him in betrayal. “You will stay in bed until I can do that and not have you cry out.” he tells her without inflection. That sounds kind of harsh, she’s definitely going to take that as a challenge. Some kind of teaching method?
As I suspect, Mairi says she’s ready to go out three more times over the next hour, each time getting a poke or tap on her arm. It’s clearly not enough to open the wound, but enough to hurt like hell. I leave him too it, trusting him to not do anything too crazy. After the third time though, Mairi stops complaining, and even falls asleep for a few hours. The moment she wakes up she says she’s ready to leave though, and is immediately rewarded with another poke and pained cry. I smirk, and wonder if there’s some way we can apply this method to other things she needs to learn.
There’s no further attempts from Mairi that day, and the next day, after another good night of rest, Master Fergus allows her to get out of bed as long as she promises to be careful. For a wonder, she is, apparently having taken his words to heart. She mostly spends the second day around Fergus’s house
I use that time to go back to the cave, and gather all the scattered bark, as well as finish the final impressionsn I made. I now have a single piece of bark for every rune, which works a whole lot better than the single piece I had before. The evidence of Mairi’s accident hits me as soon as I reach the entrance. Holy shit. Where a tree once stood, there’s nothing but destruction - a stump surrounded by a blast radius of splintered wood and sticky sap. In the center of the devastation, a perfect circle about the width of my palm remains carved into the mangled trunk, wood bent outward like a frozen explosion. This stupid, brilliant child managed to set the rune in the middle of a living tree and forcibly create a sphere of empty space where solid wood used to be. My mind immediately jumps to the application I thought of before—that same perfect sphere carved into someone’s skull, brain matter and bone exploding outward like… I shake off the gruesome thought, but can’t quite banish the twisted fascination.
The third day and after Mairi spends running around the village, with me alternately paying attention to her, and going off to do a bit of practice with the other runes. By the fourth day her arm is doing well enough that the bandages can come off. Master Fergus frowns at this, apparently having expected something different, and I’m reminded of my own near miraculous recovery from the arrow wound. Does it really have something to do with the fruit?
It slowly becomes clear that maybe I should have spent a bit more time paying attention to Mairi, and less practicing magic. It’s a good thing we’re now known as the guests of Master Fergus, because I’m not sure the townspeople would have let Mairi leave alive after the trouble she caused in just those final two days.
It started innocently enough with her “helping” the baker by reorganizing his display window, claiming the arrangement wasn’t catching enough attention. The poor man came back from his lunch break to find his carefully crafted bread sculptures arranged in what Mairi insisted was “a more dynamic composition.” The fact that it looked like a battle scene, complete with a bread-soldier stabbing another with a baguette, didn’t exactly align with the baker’s usual family-friendly image.
But that was just the beginning. The next day, she somehow convinced several of the village children that the clotheslines needed “improving.” They spent an hour meticulously rearranging everyone’s laundry by color, creating what Mairi called “a rainbow of opportunity.” The fact that this “rainbow” involved tying the clothes together into long chains that stretched between houses, turning the village into a maze of other people’s undergarments, was apparently beside the point.
But the final straw came when she decided to “help” with the village’s logging operation. I should have known something was wrong when I saw her deep in conversation with a group of children near the woodcutter’s storage area, gesturing animatedly at the massive log-hauling sleds. By the time anyone noticed what was happening, she had orchestrated what she called an “improved delivery system.” The children had greased the wooden runners of three sleds with pig fat and positioned them at the top of the village’s main slope. The idea, as Mairi later explained with unwavering conviction, was that gravity would do most of the work. Now, the slope isn’t actually all that steep, it’s a forest after all, but the pig fat made it so much worse. So what actually happened was three heavily-laden sleds careening down the hill like runaway wagons, sending villagers diving for cover and eventually crashing into the wood storage area. The sight of half the village’s wood supply scattered all over the clearing, while Mairi enthusiastically pointed out how “the logs actually cushioned the impact perfectly!” was too much. I heard several villagers making the sign against evil and muttering "beag deamhan”—little demon—under their breath. Even Master Fergus couldn’t entirely hide his relief when it was finally time for us to leave.
I watch as Mairi skips ahead of me through the village gates, and can’t help but shake my head, a mix of exasperation and amusement washing over me. The last few days have certainly put the market vendors’ reactions in a new light. That peculiar dance of theirs—some greeting her warmly while others eye her warily—suddenly makes perfect sense. The girl is either your best entertainment or your worst nightmare, and there seems to be no middle ground.
I should probably be more stern about all this. A proper parent would put their foot down, lecture about responsibility and respect about other people’s property. But damn it all if I don’t find myself fighting back a grin every time I think about those bread soldiers locked in their eternal baguette battle, or the rainbow of laundry stretching across the village like some deranged festival decoration. The girl has a way of causing chaos that’s almost… artistic.
It’s exactly the kind of mischief I would have dreamed up at her age, if I’d had the courage - or maybe just the lack of sense - to actually do it. The difference is, Mairi doesn’t just dream; she executes with the precision of a military campaign, complete with recruited accomplices and elaborate battle plans. I’m supposed to be the responsible adult here. Though, given how I’ve handled things so far, I might be failing spectacularly at that particular job requirement.
I pause in my reflections and glance back toward Master Fergus’s house, where Eilidh is still saying her goodbyes right outside the entrance. There’s something different about her now—a spark in her eyes that wasn’t there when we arrived. She’s standing straighter, more confident, even as she clutches a small leather-bound notebook to her chest that Master Fergus must have given her. A precious gift if the price of parchment is any indication. Ronain hovers nearby, his face a brilliant shade of red, stealing glances at her when he thinks no one is looking. The sight makes my heart ache a little; these moments of innocence are rare in our line of work.
Eilidh catches my eye and waves me over, her usual timidity temporarily replaced by an urgency I haven’t seen before. As I approach, she looks up at me with pleading eyes. “Emma," she starts, her voice barely above a whisper, “couldn’t I… couldn’t I stay? Just a little longer?” Her fingers trace the edge of the notebook nervously. “There’s so much more to learn, and Master Fergus says…”
“Indeed,” the old man interjects, his pale eyes twinkling with that familiar mixture of wisdom and mischief. “A week is barely enough time to scratch the surface of proper herbal study. The girl shows remarkable promise.” He strokes his chin thoughtfully, careful not to look at Ronain, whose blush has somehow managed to deepen even further. “It would be a shame to waste such potential.”
I notice how Eilidh’s hands have stopped fidgeting with the notebook, how her shoulders have squared ever so slightly as she awaits my answer. Behind her, Ronain seems to be finding the pattern of the floorboards absolutely fascinating, though his ears are pricked toward our conversation like a cat’s.
I… I mean, I don’t mind. I just don’t know what Rhona and the others will say. At the same time. It’s not really their decision. As much as these kids live together, and have made a temporary family, there’s really no parents to decide anything for them. While I’m flattered Eilidh is asking me, I’m in no position to say no.
“You know I’m not actually your parent right? Besides, aren’t you almost old enough to be considered an adult anyway?” I don’t really know what the age of majority is in this era, but I seem to remember it was a deal younger than in mine. “Well, yes…” she stammers. She stares at the dirt, drawing patterns with one of her toes “I might have been married by now.”
I can resist a glance at Ronain, whose head has turned ripe tomato red. Never mind that he’s not of an age to marry himself, and that it’s probably youthful infatuation.
It’s not like it’s permanent anyway right. Am I really going to reject this one chance she has at a better life? Hell no. She should take it with both hands.
I let out a small sigh and give Eilidh a gentle smile. “Look, the way I see it, opportunities like this don’t come around often in our world.” I pause, choosing my words carefully. “Master Fergus is offering you a chance to learn something real, something valuable. Not just picking pockets or…” I gesture vaguely, not wanting to explicitly mention the less savory activities in front of the old man. “Well, you know.”
Eilidh’s eyes light up with hope, though she’s still trying to contain her excitement, as if afraid I might change my mind. I continue, “I’ll talk to Rhona and the others. And listen,” I place my hand on her shoulder, making sure she meets my eyes, "this isn’t a forever goodbye, okay? We—we’re your family too. You’re welcome to come back any time you want.” I smile a bit wryly at the idea that we’ll probably be back soon if the whole fruit thing works out. “Plus, well, I have a feeling we’ll be back here soon anyway.”
The words feel strange coming from my mouth. Me, the antisocial programmer who used to avoid office parties like the plague, talking about family and belonging. But I mean every word of it, and somehow that’s even stranger.
“Just…” I add with a smirk, glancing at Master Fergus, “try to learn actual healing herbs and not whatever Mairi would undoubtedly try to learn, alright?”
Master Fergus’s weathered face turns serious, the persistent twinkle in his eyes temporarily replaced by something harder, more ancient. “Ah, now that’s where you’re wrong, lass,” Master Fergus says, pushing himself up straighter with a soft grunt “There’s no learning healing without understanding its opposite. Every plant, every root that can mend can also harm. It’s two sides of the same coin, you see.” He runs his papery fingers along the arm of his chair, as if tracing invisible patterns. “A healer who knows nothing of poison is like a warrior who’s never seen a blade—dangerous in their ignorance. The difference lies not in the knowledge itself, but in the heart of the one who wields it.”
His words hang in the air, heavy with the weight of experience. I find myself shifting uncomfortably, suddenly aware that this kindly old man probably knows a hundred ways to kill a person while making it look like natural causes. The thought sends a chill down my spine, even as I recognize the wisdom in his words. Eilidh, for her part, is hanging on every word, her eyes wide with a mixture of fascination and something that might be fear.
“Well, alright then.” I say with forced cheerfulness. “Learn whatever Master Fergus thinks you should learn then.” I’m reminded of how Ronain also inadvertedly taught me how to make a few simple poisons, and I suddenly feel foolish for saying what I did. We had a whole conversation about this right when we arrived too.
“Emma, Eilidh, are you coooming?” shouts Mairi from the village entrance, where she’s stopped, waiting for us to catch up. I wave at her, then turn to Eilidh and wish her good luck one more time, before turning back and jogging to catch up to Mairi. “Where’s Eilidh?” she asks. I’m hesitant, not sure how she’ll respond. “She’ll be staying here to study with Master Fergus,” I say with some hesitation.
Mairi looks shocked. “What? Nooo!” She looks rapidly back and forth between where Eilidh is standing, and the road. “I was going to…” she looks dejected. Then suddenly cups her hands around her mouth and shouts at Eilidh “Have fun with your boyfriend!” That done, she turns around and starts walking down the road. I look between Mairi and where Eilidh was standing, though it seems she’s fled inside. Master Fergus is waving, somehow, with his old body, and Ronain, well, I’m sure he’s happy.
I run after Mairi. What was her problem? When I catch up, I quickly ask “You are not sad?” She looks at me with surprise painted all over her face. “No? Why would I be?” It’s my turn to frown “You seemed so upset that Eilidh was staying.” She laughs “No, that’s good for her. I was just looking forward to teasing her this entire trip.”
I shake my head, not sure how things ended up this way, but we have the fruit, I copied all the runes properly, Mairi has magic, and Eilidh has found a new passion. It’s a shame Eilidh hasn’t eaten a fruit, but I had planned to do that on the way back. Either way, now it’s time to return, and figure out what to do after.